Movies, TV, and Games – News and Reviews – Opinions and Reflections

Holy shit! Marvel and Netflix are basically doing for TV series what they did for movies. 4 Heroes. Each get their own 13 episode series, and they they work together in a mini-series team up. Holy shit.

I can’t begin to tell you how excited this makes me. I love the Marvel Cinematic Universe and I’m always excited to see them expand it. There’s no mention of whether these will tie in or not but at this point it’d be kind of dumb for them not to.

Plus as much as I love the movie series they deal with the big name, big picture heroes. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. seems to be dealing with mid level stuff (not quite earth threatening, but global reach). These new series all focus on street level heroes in New York, a little more down to earth concept and fleshes out that the Marvel Universe isn’t strictly patrolled by gods and monsters fighting alien invasions and nazi superweapons.

Just a quick run down for those of you who don’t know them:

Daredevil, aka Matt Murdock, is a lawyer in Hell’s Kitchen. Thanks to exposure to toxic chemicals as child he loses his vision but gains enhanced strength and his other senses are rendered hypersensitive.

Jessica Jones, aka Jewel, and later Power Girl, is an investigative journalist who also gains powers due to a chemical spill. She has enhanced strength, resistance to injury and a limited ability to fly.

Iron Fist, aka Danny Rand, is a wealthy businessman and martial artist who thanks to a visit to a mystical eastern city, a fight with a dragon and intense training can focus his chi to either greatly increase his natural abiities (strength, speed, agility, etc) or concentrate said energy into his hand giving it a supernatural glow and giving him the ability to break just about anything.

Luke Cage, ala Power Man, was convicted of a crime he didn’t commit and as a way to get out early he volunteered for an experiment which was meant to give him immunity to disease but ended up giving him greatly enhanced strength and skin as hard as steel.

All four of these characters are centered in Hell’s Kitchen in New York. I don’t want to jump the gun but I’m guessing that means that it’ll turn out that there’s one man pulling the strings behind their respective mysteries, and they’ll team up to take him on in the resulting mini series event. My one and only guess? Kingpin, the man at the top of all the crime in New York in the comics.

It helps that all of these characters have worked with one another in the comics too. Hell, Luke Cage and Jessica Jones are married (hence the matching names) and Luke Cage and Iron Fist had a comic title together as the Heroes for Hire.

It also helps that three of the four of them have very similar origin stories, it’ll be easy to make the chemicals that empower them come from the same place, maybe even from Danny Rand’s company somehow.

All in all this is a very exciting announcement and I can’t wait for these new series to start! What do you guys think? I’m having a nerdgasm over here.

Burbank, Calif. – Nov 7, 2013—The Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) and Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX) today announced an unprecedented deal for Marvel TV to bring multiple original series of live-action adventures of four of Marvel’s most popular characters exclusively to the world’s leading Internet TV Network beginning in 2015. This pioneering agreement calls for Marvel to develop four serialized programs leading to a mini-series programming event.

Led by a series focused on “Daredevil,” followed by “Jessica Jones,” “Iron Fist” and “Luke Cage,” the epic will unfold over multiple years of original programming, taking Netflix members deep into the gritty world of heroes and villains of Hell’s Kitchen, New York. Netflix has committed to a minimum of four, thirteen episodes series and a culminating Marvel’s “The Defenders” mini-series event that reimagines a dream team of self-sacrificing, heroic characters.
Produced by Marvel Television in association with ABC Television Studios, this groundbreaking deal is Marvel’s most ambitious foray yet into live-action TV storytelling.

“This deal is unparalleled in its scope and size, and reinforces our commitment to deliver Marvel’s brand, content and characters across all platforms of storytelling. Netflix offers an incredible platform for the kind of rich storytelling that is Marvel’s specialty,” said Alan Fine, President of Marvel Entertainment. “This serialized epic expands the narrative possibilities of on-demand television and gives fans the flexibility to immerse themselves how and when they want in what’s sure to be a thrilling and engaging adventure.”

“Marvel’s movies, such as ‘Iron Man’ and ‘Marvel’s The Avengers,’ are huge favorites on our service around the world. Like Disney, Marvel is a known and loved brand that travels,” said Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos. “With ‘House of Cards’ and our other original series, we have pioneered new approaches to storytelling and to global distribution and we’re thrilled to be working with Disney and Marvel to take our brand of television to new levels with a creative project of this magnitude.”

This new original TV deal follows last year’s landmark movie distribution deal through which, beginning with 2016 theatrically released feature films, Netflix will be the exclusive U.S. subscription television service for first-run, live-action and animated movies from the Walt Disney Studios, including titles from Disney, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar Animation Studios, Marvel Studios, Disneynature and Lucasfilm. Netflix members can currently enjoy a wide range of Disney, ABC TV and Disney Channel films and shows across the 41 countries where Netflix operates.

About The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company, together with its subsidiaries and affiliates, is a leading diversified international entertainment and media enterprise with five business segments: media networks, parks and resorts, studio entertainment, consumer products and interactive media. Disney is a Dow 30 company and had annual revenues of $42.3 billion in its Fiscal Year 2012.

About Netflix
Netflix is the world’s leading Internet television network with over 40 million members in more than 40 countries enjoying more than one billion hours of TV shows and movies per month, including original series. For one low monthly price, Netflix members can watch as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, on nearly any Internet-connected screen. Members can play, pause and resume watching, all without commercials or commitments

More on Marvel.com:
http://marvel.com/news/story/21476/disneys_marvel_and_netflix_join_forces_to_develop_historic_four_series_epic_plus_a_mini-series_event#ixzz2k05oMFEm